Joy Flight

“I like you; your eyes are full of language.
(Letter to Anne Clark, July 3, 1964)”

— Anne Sexton

This was a commission piece.

I received a special request from a mother who wanted to gift an artwork to a speech therapist who had been working with her family. 7 elements had to be included:

• baby

• lion

• monkey

• snake

• ice cream

• steam train

• aeroplane

Thankfully my style of artwork permits imaginative free association, so I was more than happy to accept the challenge. I knew I wanted a mottled background, so I used scraps of paint leftover from previous paintings to tint the canvas background, then when that had dried, used a round sponge to scrub over some Australian Sky Blue in vigorous circles.

I started outlining the main elements with a small flat brush and burnt umber. After that dried, the fun bit began where I could start to block in the main colours and introduce shading. I wanted a friendly looking lion, so Mr Lion looks rather benign.

Suddenly I realised that I had forgotten the snake!! Ooo. Mr Monkey looked like he could have done with a friend, so I decided to loop Mr Snake around his tail. (My dad commented that this would be highly improbable in real life, but what the heck, it’s not realism afterall.)

I was hoping that my young child in the plane would suffice for the element of baby, but it turned out the client really wanted a very young baby, the kind who is still in diapers and needing milk. Had to sleep on that for another day, and managed to alter the painting without too much angst.

Taught me a lesson. Never assume to know what other people are thinking.

Happy client, happy artist, and hopefully happy recipient.

“There are, perhaps, a great many languages in the world, and no kind is without meaning.”

— 1 Corinthians 14:10

Flowers

“I think there is something beautiful about the art of making art, and it just will live and breathe. ”

— Annaleigh Ashford

I am not a faithful crafter. I try out lots of different things. In the past years, I’ve tried and taught myself the following activities:

• cross stitch

• freeform embroidery and thread painting

• crochet, both with yarn and fine cotton thread

• knitting

• patchwork and quilting

• applique

• general sewing

As a result of all the above endeavours, I find myself left with stashes of yarn, threads, fabrics and other haberdashery. Assuaging my feelings of guilt, I tell myself not to feel bad because these things are not perishable and will therefore keep for a rainy day.

I’ve since given away much of my yarn stash, leaving a few balls of luxury yarns behind. BUT, I still have a very respectable stash of patchwork fabric. I’ve managed to squeeze out some time to make some fiddle blankets for patients with cognitive impairment at my workplace, and I would have to admit that this has been one of the nicest and most relaxing activities to do to date. No need for exact measurements or precise seaming. No patterns to follow. Just stitch all the scraps together into an approximate rectangle, some batting and backing, bind it all, small amount of quilting, and there I have it - a fiddle quilt all ready to go. I made about 10 of these and gave them all away to the hospital. However, this still leaves me with a lot of oddly-shaped scraps of fabric.

What to do?

Aha!

Fussy cut some shapes for collage! Genius!

So here, I’ve put together a couple of paintings on A3 watercolour paper, featuring fantasy flowers. Certainly very cheerful for any blank wall.

These 3 flower collages went to live in a new home soon after their completion. It is now gracing the walls of a little girl’s bedroom, cheering up her personal space. Hooray.

“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness.”

— Galatians 5:22

Childhood Landscape

This painting brings back so many memories for me.

I wanted to capture the old shophouses which are still so common in Malaysia. These are terraced buildings where people would run their small businesses from the shopfront below, and have their living quarters above. Very convenient, yes?

All the shops would be adjoining one another, and you could easily walk from one end to another in a long corridor without ever getting wet or sunburnt. Many of these buildings are still rather run-down in the city centre of my home town, and it isn’t all that hard to imagine that life back then would have been hard, and multiple generations of family members would be cramped into the living quarters upstairs. When I was growing up, if you were passing by in front of these shophouses, you would often see people lounging or bustling behind the half open shutters of the living areas. These shops would sell a variety of things, from jewellery, sundry grocery items, fabric and knick-knacks, and some would offer services such as barbering, small coffeeshops and bookshops.

That bus numbered 170 in the right bottom corner is a major feature of my younger student life. You know why? It was the only public bus that would run from SIngapore to Johor Baru (JB), Malaysia, and a major means of transport for the thousands of commuters who needed to travel to and from Singapore across the Malaysian border everyday. Nowadays, there are several different numbered buses that would make the same border crossing, but in the 80s and 90s, bus number 170 was the only one. Can you imagine lotsa lotsa people crammed into that one bus like sardines, smelling from a hot and humid day’s work or study, with no air-conditioning? If it was raining, the windows would be shut, and it would be tremendously yucky inside.

Anyway, a one way trip between JB and Singapore would average around an hour and a half in those days. So that would mean total travelling time of about 3 hours a day for an average commuter. It would be worse if the roads were congested with traffic, which was a frequent occurrence. Students quickly learnt to take cat naps on the bus, or to get some homework done. I’m sure some students from single sex schools enjoyed the social interaction on those buses too.

In those days too, there were particular sections of main road along the bus route which would flood on rainy days (frequent occurrence in the tropics), and those would be interesting too, as we would then be splashing around at the bus shelters, trying to avoid the back wash from passing vehicles, and trying to keep our school uniforms dry. Who invented these outfits?? Didn’t they know that white is not a good colour for female uniform skirts???

It taught us a lot of resilience but I sure am glad that my children don’t have to do this.

Georgetown, Penang

This was what the old public buses used to look like

Old bus tickets - the conductor would punch a hole in it as you boarded. Many of us would have lots of these folded in our wallets. You could avoid this if you had a monthly bus pass that you would flash at the driver.

Day Job and Night Job

Is this not the stereotypical image of a happy doctor????

During the day, I am expected to do this sort of thing. Doctoring. Looking after the sick and afflicted. Solving health problems. Some days though, perhaps because of the health area I work in, I feel a bit more like an over-qualified social worker. It’s tough being a doctor these days. I think a lot of non-medical people don’t realise that after you graduate as a fresh-faced green medical intern, you get paid perhaps something like $35 an hour. If you make any decent money as a junior doctor, it would be because you have given up all your weekends and nights to pick up shifts with penalty rates, which means you have no life to spend your money on anyway.

With the number of medical schools in Australia churning out medical students, it is getting increasingly difficult to find specialist training positions. These aren’t regulated by the government, by the way. The hospitals don’t care too much which jobs are training positions, and which aren’t. They are only interested in having X number of doctors to fill Y number of jobs, whether you pass your exams or not, is not really their concern. All they want is their shifts filled.

The number of training positions is regulated directly by all the specialist training colleges. And I am finding more and more that there is a disparity between what the colleges demand for accreditation of jobs as training positions, and what is actually practical to provide on a daily basis by supervising clinicians. I have recently had to fill in a detailed document on what my workplace provides for a trainee, and it was close to ridiculous how many hours I was meant to be spending babysitting. I mean, these are grown university graduates of supposed high IQ, come on!

As far as I’m concerned, as a clinical supervisor, I will be there for you to back you up when you need, act as a resource person and mentor, teach you practical skills where I can, but medicine is one of those jobs, where you seriously need to learn on the job and spend some serious practical time developing your style as a clinician. Of course, you are more than welcome to watch me in my daily staff/patient interactions, and to learn from me what you can, but ultimately every clinician has their own style of handling things. So many uncertainties and variations in medicine, guidelines should be used as guidelines, and not as gospel.

Anyway.

I have a lot more fun at my night job. I sketch and paint. And thanks to the magic of the internet and the immense support of my OH*, many medical and nursing colleagues, and personal friends, I now have a modest paying hobby creating artwork for them. Enough to bring some mental wellbeing into my life. Hopefully through my artwork, I am able to bring some joy to others who enjoy looking at my pictures.

The sketch below was done on an outing last year with Brisbane City Sketchers. I spied this little back alley along Charlotte Street, and thought the back view of these terraces told a great story. Who lives and works out of these? What do the insides look like? Minimalist and spartan? Or retro and cluttered? Or perhaps full of dust and cobwebs? Or a total bachelor pad? And who could miss that futuristic G-shaped balcony pod on the right side?

*Other Half

The Sea Is Calling Me

This painting actually came about by accident.

It was meant to be a commission piece, but the client was unable to give me much in terms of a brief, so I painted what I thought would fit the bill, unfortunately it wasn’t right.

Thankfully many other people liked it and it sold to a lovely lady who has synaesthesia and told me that this painting sounded like a loud cheerful resounding “D” major chord! Which is simply wonderful.

Before I started this painting, I had recently bought some beautiful turquoise paint from our local art store - this tiny little jar cost me almost $50! So I was determined to try out lovely shades of teal and turquoises in this piece, which made a beautiful contrast to the rich orangey gold tones of the hills.

The little hill in the top right hand corner came about intuitively. I usually use burnt umber to do some of my outlines and this particular shape came about. My kids came to examine my picture after it was finished and declared that I had inserted Uluru into my painting, which they were very pleased about. Other people have since said that the hill reminds of The Nut in Tasmania.

The main lesson I have learnt from this particular job is that it is essential that I clarify as best as I can, in as much detail as I can, what clients expect from their art piece. Commissions can be so rewarding to do, but also stressful at times. But each piece is a learning experience, and I am only too appreciative of the learning opportunities it gives me.

Yum Cha

Prawn and pork dumplings

Visited a local Chinese restaurant Din Tai Fung for lunch with my family while holidaying overseas. It is so nice to be hanging out with my parents and nanny after not having seen them in person for almost a year.

Delicious dumplings. Savoury wonton soup. Crispy fragrant spring rolls. Etc, etc, etc.

Even the kids ate well. Kid E ate 2 rice bowls of fried rice and 1 bowl of noodles. Kid M ate 1 rice bowl of fried rice, 1 bowl of noodles and 5 soupy dumplings. I think it’s a huge achievement for fussy kids like mine. I had a really refreshing drink made of lime juice spiked with lemongrass.

Both kids hit their grandma (Popo) up for fancy stationery, which Popo was super-pleased to accommodate, because she only sees them once a year due to living overseas. So the little opportunists jumped at the chance!

Delicate wonton soup

Xiao Long Bao

Now I See You

I am very fond of animals.

After my first 2 cats (my beloved Pusspuss and Abbycat) passed on from old age, I felt too sad to have cats and decided to adopt a pair of cockatiels. They were bred to be hand tame, and would sit on my shoulder and nibble my hair and necklace. I started a fun habit of collecting edible weeds and grasses for them to eat, and soon got very familiar with which weeds were high in protein and safe to eat around our neighbourhood. At several occasions, I even tried a few of these weeds in a salad for myself. I’m pretty comfortable now with identifying wild plants such as sorrel, dandelion, cow thistle, pui grass, shepherd’s purse, chickweed, purslane, clover and several others. I also discovered the terrible sting of nettles, and even braved making nettle pesto for pasta - surprisingly delicious! Finding edible grasses and browse for my pets motivated me to take walks around my neighbourhood everyday.

Work and other life activities started to pick up momentum and I soon realised that I didn’t have enough time to devote to my little birds. I made the difficult decision then to give them away to another bird lover who would have time to interact with them. Eventually I found someone with a large aviary to adopt them, and my whistling pretty cockatiels went to their new home.

I wanted to experiment with a bright yellow background, and played around with paint spatters and drips for my backdrop tree (a jacaranda tree??). I had to do this at the back patio and consequently some of the floor tiles there are now polka dotted with purple and blue blobs. Ah well. Better than spattering my white indoor walls anyway.

So I painted this piece in memory of my 2 cockatiels, with a small feature of my current rag doll cat, Maxi, in the same painting. For a while, they co-existed in the same house, and I was always amused at how he would eye them off.

Auntie Ruth's Daycare

My kids started long day care with Auntie Ruth when they were 2 years old. They stayed for 4 years till they were ready to start prep. I want to write about her today because we have been friends a long time. Her family recently had to experience a terrible unexpected heartbreak, and this is my way of telling her that they mean a lot to our family and we are willing to help in any way we can.

It was all by accident, that we found Auntie Ruth to be our daycare mum. Our usual daycare lady had to stop her business due to an emergency, and with 1 week to spare between Christmas and New Year, OH* and I cast around desperately for someone to take her place. Thankfully, the internet came to the rescue, and OH managed to ring someone called Ruth to ask about vacancies.

At first, she didn’t have any spare spots for us. However, luck struck when she felt that she really wanted the experience of caring for twins and she rang us back for an interview. And the rest is history.

OH and I will always be grateful that our little ones had a wholesome and grounded upbringing with Ruth and her family. They had lots of pet animals, ducks, chooks, guinea pigs, a dog and a cat, with which all the kids enjoyed interacting. They had plenty of excursions to fun places. They learnt their first book lessons and crafty skills. They learnt to appreciate a good cup of babycino! They learnt heaps about manners, and thankfully also managed most of their toilet training with Ruth. Given that they used to spend Monday to Friday 8 am to 6 pm in Ruth’s home, I am so pleased that we are still all in touch and the girls still talk about their daycare mum and family so fondly.

So here, I have a painting of Ruth’s home and her menagerie, which has brought so much warmth and comfort to the kids’ lives. This painting is now proudly hanging in Ruth’s home playroom.

*Other Half